Are there benefits of interoperability for public administrations?

Digital interoperability can benefit public administrations by providing them with a real choice of innovative platforms and services that better suit their own needs and their citizens’ needs. Interoperable digital services can also provide them with greater flexibility and lower costs by reducing switching costs and anti-competitive barriers created by a lock-in to specific service providers.

At the moment, digital gatekeepers have little incentive to take account of the needs of public administrations because of the sheer size of their existing user base, so that their products and services are often based on maximising benefits for the gatekeepers (for example, in terms of keeping customers locked in to a ‘walled garden’ of proprietary products and services).